Thus we still do not and, in all probability, will never know any clear results of the mayoral elections in Mukacheve. In any case, such things as official decisions of the electoral commission, court rulings, and even the fact that the elected candidate has assumed office, are no longer a yardstick for measuring authenticity of the popular vote.
A SYMBOLIC VICTORY
The lineup was clear enough during the first election campaign: local heartthrob Ernest Nuser, who had won a landslide in the oblast council elections, and Vasyl Petevka, a dark horse even in Transcarpathia, who seemed to stand poor chances. Yet, Our Ukraine’s skillful application of the administrative resource and the assistance of Barva, a company that provides daily bread for many Mukacheve residents, allowed Petevka to emerge victorious.
Consequently, this not-so-fair victory made Mukacheve the pivot of a symbolic confrontation between Our Ukraine and SDPU(O). Moreover, it was not the question of what was in store for Transcarpathia’s second largest city, of Our Ukraine’s wish to strike roots in the region, and not even of SDPU(O)’s desire to show who is master in the oblast. It was the question of a certain model of presidential elections: whoever (and, to a large extent, by what methods) wins in Mukacheve will also win in Ukraine.
As a result, this completely tangled the situation during the second campaign. The confrontation between the political, economic, and, by some accounts, criminal groups has heated things up. It was not so easy to distinguish between the true prestige of Viktor Baloha (a really popular figure in Transcarpathia, although his image was a bit tarnished by dubious connections) and the result of intimidation and fixing. A wide gap between the results of exit polls and official ballot counting shows that people are just afraid to say whom they preferred. It will be recalled that, according to exit polls, Baloha gained 62% and Nuser 30% of the votes, while the parallel counting showed entirely different figures: 51% for Baloha 37% for Nuser.
On the other hand, Baloha was not, by all accounts, bent on winning. All he had to do was demonstrate how bad SDPU(O) was, and, to do so, he could simply withdraw from the race, as was the case in Sumy and Romny. The reason is clear: on the one hand, presidential candidate Viktor Yushchenko will derive a greater benefit from a popular regional deputy than from the mayor of a city (even the second largest in the oblast); on the other hand, Baloha is likely to face problems that require parliamentary immunity. Incidentally, Taras Stetskiv refused to answer the question whether Baloha will waive his Verkhovna Rada mandate (plus immunity) if he wins the mayoral elections. He only said it was important for Our Ukraine to prove that their candidate can win.
Our Ukraine did show that it could win and SDPU(O) that it could thwart this victory.
A PATTERN FOR THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS?
“What is going on in Mukacheve and has happened before in Romny and Sumy has become, unfortunately, a tendency in Ukrainian elections,” said Viktor Yushchenko. A tendency being really there, can one still claim that the Mukacheve experience can be applied on a nationwide scale?
First, elections in a 50-million-strong country has nothing to do with one in an 80,000-strong district center — at least for the reason that you can bring policemen, gangsters, spin doctors, etc., to a city from other regions, but it must be far more difficult to create a required atmosphere in the whole country. Accordingly, the tested techniques can be applied very sparingly.
Secondly, Mukacheve is not a typical city of our country. Moreover, Transcarpathia as a whole is not a typical region with not quite typical problems. Suffice it to recall that this region was an SPDU(O) stronghold in 1998, but now this party has largely lost it grip on people’s minds, allowing Our Ukraine to struggle for power. The political confrontation, typical of the whole country, has assumed an especially acute and personalized nature at the level of political parties as well as mayoral candidates in this region. It is perhaps only in Lviv that a similar face-off exists.
Thirdly, the Mukacheve case could touch off a discussion about “historical justice:” Our Ukraine has ended with what it started last year, i.e., election fixing, while Nuser still became the mayor. It is quite difficult to fancy this course of events on the national scale. The presidential elections are likely to be the last line after which it will be too late to clamor for what they suppose is justice.
WHO IS HINTING WHAT?
The Mukacheve elections clearly show the aspiration of both the government and the opposition not only to gain a “symbolic victory” but also to demonstrate their emergency strategies. The government is showing the way the presidential elections will go should Our Ukraine succeed in foiling the political reform.
What does all this help? Does the opposition hope to win even if it is impossible to win in a situation like this? It seems it does. Our Ukraine (let alone Yuliya Tymoshenko) will hardly benefit from a fair win in a democratic election. For even if the current Constitution still remains in force, such a victory will make them reckon with the opposition. Then why not opt for a Georgian scenario? The opposition is exactly hinting that it can wield moral power. If the Mukacheve city hall was stormed today by seventy people’s deputies, will Verkhovna Rada and the Presidential Administration be stormed by 70,000 followers of Yushchenko tomorrow?
To sum it up, both sides have shown readiness to fight for power to the end with no holds barred, even if it comes to what borders on a civil conflict.
A PESSIMISTIC POSTSRIPT
First, each of the political forces that are now accusing each other of undermining democracy and jeopardizing Ukraine’s independence and territorial integrity is in fact bent on creating, if necessary, this kind of danger. For it is crystal clear (as the experience of Georgia shows) that no coup will bring along more democracy. The government’s unbounded cynicism is terrible, but still more terrible is the equally unbounded cynicism of the opposition, which guarantees that the new leadership will be no better than the previous one.
Secondly, even if it the question of not power but just a “symbolic victory,” the most “responsible” and “democratic” politicians utterly forget about the interests of voters and the inadmissibility of employing dirty ploys in an election campaign. What the “war of hints” and “symbolic victories” pushed to the background are the interests of the city’s 80,000-population.
